The ultimate in a future utopian society where the only god properly accepted is music and in such an ideal world what you can gain most from a jazz recording for us is the answer ''yes'' to these questions: were you moved? Did you get healed? Obviously everyone has something wrong with them (it's called the human condition) so if the latter, bingo - if you former, the road to the hall. Number four - knock on the door.

Do either of these phenomena happen here? No. But that does not invalidate what is obviously a fine record in aesthetic, delicately detailed harmonic and compositional terms that drives us on towards another top aspiration when - make the metaphorical leap as there are no vocals here - the singer becomes the song.

You don't need to know 2022's View With A Room which is similar (and marginally better) incidentally to grasp what's here. There is no sense of heated up alternate takes or the label milking the cow. Six originals from genius guitarist Julian Lage whose sound with the possible glimmer of an exception in the harmonic kindred chiming that you might encounter on a Jesse Harris song you won't hear anywhere apart from on the hq of a Lage record of which there are quite a lot already given the American was a child prodigy and the word got out about him ages ago. Here once again with old mucker bassist Jorge Roeder and the popular maverick Dave King (The Bad Plus) blending in highly collegiate fashion with the master Bill Frisell, the pick of the tracks in terms of the wonder of a universe created with a minimum of production ''bells and whistles'' is the organic cascading sense gained from 'This World' - one of several tracks streaming ahead of the full album's release. Out on St Patrick's Day. The Lage trio play Band on the Wall, Manchester, on 27 April. Julian Lage, photo: press